Case T-267/16: Action brought on 27 May 2016 — Tarmac Trading v Commission
Date: 2016-05-27
Institutions: General Court
Subjects: State aid, United Kingdom, control of State aid, earths and stones, environmental tax, principle of proportionality, reimbursement of aid, tax exemption








C_2016287EN.01002501.xml










8.8.2016   


EN


Official Journal of the European Union


C 287/25





Action brought on 27 May 2016 — Tarmac Trading v Commission
(Case T-267/16)
(2016/C 287/31)
Language of the case: English

Parties


Applicant: Tarmac Trading Ltd. (Birmingham, United Kingdom) (represented by: D. Anderson and P. Halford, Solicitors and K. Beal, QC)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:






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annul Commission Decision (EU) 2016/288 of 27 March 2015 in Case SA.34775 (13/C) (ex 12/NN) — Aggregates levy — and, in particular, recitals (625), (626), (629) and (630) and Articles 5 and 7 of that Contested decision — insofar as:






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the contested decision defines the sole beneficiaries of the unlawful aid as the companies which produced shale and products consisting mainly of shale between 1 April 2002 and the date of the decision (‘shale producers’); and










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the contested decision specifies the amount of aid to be recovered from the shale producers alone, requires recovery from them of the full amount of the aggregates levy (‘AGL’) to which the unlawful exemptions applied and fails to require the UK Government to reduce the amount to be recovered to the extent that the shale producers passed on the benefit of those exemptions to their customers; and














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order the Commission to pay the costs of the Applicant in the present proceedings.





Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on two pleas in law.






1.


First plea in law, alleging an error of law and/or a manifest error of assessment in the identification of the beneficiaries and the quantification of amount of aid failing to be recovered.
According to the Applicant, insofar as the contested decision identifies the shale producers as the sole beneficiaries of the unlawful aid and does not require the United Kingdom to reduce the amount to be recovered from them to the extent that they passed on the benefit of the shale exemption to their customers, the Commission has made an error of law and/or committed a manifest error of assessment.






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The Applicant puts forward that the case-law of the General Court in Case T-308/00 RENV, Salzgitter/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2013:30), that has established that recovery must be limited to the financial advantages actually arising from the placing of the aid at the disposal of the beneficiary, and be proportionate to them. Moreover, so the Applicant states, Cases T-473/12, Aer Lingus/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:78) and T-500/12, Ryanair/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:73), establish that, in the case of an aid consisting of a reduction of an indirect tax levied on the consumption of a particular good or service and intended to be passed on by an undertaking to its customers, and where the economic advantage arising from the application of the reduced tax could also have been passed on to its customers, the amount of aid falling to be recovered from the undertaking is only the advantage actually obtained and retained by the undertaking.










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The Applicant further puts forward that the AGL is an indirect tax levied on the consumption of aggregates and intended (by the UK Government) to be passed on by the undertakings extracting and commercially exploiting the aggregates, to their customers. The economic advantage arising from the shale exemptions, so the Applicant claims, could have been –and indeed actually was- passed on by the shale producers (including the Applicant) in the form of lower prices for the sale.










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The Applicant further puts forward that for the same reason, recovery of the full amount of unpaid aggregates levy could not ensure the re-establishment of the status quo ante and would be liable to create additional distortions of competition, since it could lead to the recovery of more from the shale producers (including the Applicant) that the advantage they actually enjoyed.










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Accordingly, so the Applicant states, following Cases T-473/12, Aer Lingus/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:78) and T-500/12, Ryanair/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:73), the only aid falling to be recovered from the shale producers is the advantage actually obtained and retained by them.










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Finally, the Applicant puts forward that insofar as the contested decision requires the recovery from the shale producers of the full amount of the AGL from which they were exempted under the shale exemptions, without any reduction to take account of the benefit passed on by the shale producers to their customers, the Commission made an error of law, wrongly applied Article 108 TFUE and/or Article 14 of Council Regulation (EC) 659/1999 laying down detailed rules for the application of Article 93 of the EC Treaty (OJ L 83, p. 1) and/or made a manifest error of assessment.














2.


Second plea in law, alleging an infringement of the EU principle of proportionality.
The Applicant puts forward that in breach of Article 14(1) of Council Regulation (EC) 659/1999, recovering the full amount of unpaid aggregates levy from the Applicant in relation to the shale it exploited would be disproportionate to any financial advantage arising from the placing of the aid at its disposal. The Applicant passed on the entire benefit of the exemption from AGL to its customers and it would be impossible in practice for it to recover retroactively that unpaid AGL from its customers.